American Grit is a new competition series starring WWE Superstar John Cena. Sixteen of the country’s toughest men and women will be split into four teams as they work together to face a variety of military-grade and survival-themed challenges. Cena and an elite group of mentors from the nation’s most exclusive military units will push these civilians beyond their limits. With up to a million dollars of prize money at stake, this is the ultimate test of strength, grit, the human spirit and most importantly, teamwork.

The two-hour event, titled Brain Surgery Live with Mental Floss, gave viewers an up-close look at an awake deep brain stimulation surgery. Filming took place via two handheld cameras well as several robotic cameras with inputs directly in the doctors’ surgical equipment, allowing viewers to see live images as the brain is being operated on in real time. The special mixed live coverage from the operating room at University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland, Ohio with pre-produced informative packages on the brain.

Ten people enter the Vancouver Island wilderness carrying only what they can fit in a small backpack. They are alone in harsh, unforgiving terrain with a single mission–stay alive as long as they can. These brave men and women must hunt, build shelters, and fend off predators. They will endure extreme isolation and psychological distress as they plunge into the unknown and document the experience themselves. No camera crew. No producers. It is the ultimate test of human will.

Counting Cars

The series, which is the third spinoff of Pawn Stars, is filmed in Las Vegas, Nevada, where it chronicles the daily activities at Count’s Kustoms, an automobile restoration and customization company owned and operated by Danny Koker, who previously appeared as a recurring expert on Pawn Stars. In a format similar to another Pawn Stars spinoff, American Restoration, the series follows Koker and his staff as they restore and modify classic automobiles and motorcycles. Counting Cars debuted on August 13, 2012.

Cutting It in the ATL

Atlanta has long been the home to some of the country’s most talented stylists, buzzed about salons and discerning clientele. It’s also home to studios filled with single-chair salons and stylists who dream of making their mark on the Atlanta hair scene. The series follows five salon owners who are out to grow their businesses while competing with one another for clients and stylists.

Billy The Kid: New Evidence

In a California memorabilia shop in 2010, collector Randy Guijarro bought this 4-by-5-inch tintype for just $2. After enlarging the image, he saw what looked to be a familiar figure—Billy the Kid—playing croquet with his gang known as The Regulators. Guijarro also thought he recognized the Kid’s best friends Tom O’Folliard and Charlie Bowdre in the photo. As the gravity of the discovery began to set in, Guijarro initiated a chain of events that would lead him on a painstaking journey to verify the photograph’s authenticity.

Pawn Stars

This series opens the doors to the only family-run pawnshop in Las Vegas, where three generations of the Harrison family use their sharp-eyed skills to assess what’s real and what’s fake. Objects the colorful customers bring in range from the obscure to the truly historic, and it’s up to the guys at the Gold & Silver Pawn Shop — with help at times from their network of experts — to reveal the sometimes surprising answer to “What’s this worth?”

Footballtown: Barrow Alaska

Despite having never experienced the Friday night-lights of the lower 48, the Barrow High School football team lives for football. Last year they were 3-6 overall, and third in their conference, which spans the distance of the entire state and consists of only six teams. Ten years ago the school administered a survey to students, asking what activities they wanted to have available to them; the answer was unanimously football.

Realscreen’s Trailblazers 2014: Brent Montgomery

When Brent Montgomery and his team at Leftfield Pictures unleashed the lightning in a bottle that was History’s smash hit Pawn Stars in 2009, it cemented both the company’s status and that of its founder as one of the unscripted content industry’s biggest success stories in recent memory. The events of 2014 added a couple of important new chapters to the story.

With Pawn Stars effectively kick-starting the “artefactual” trend that still sees new shows commissioned internationally, and the series itself still a crown jewel for History (104 episodes were ordered for 2014 alone, the largest order for any docusoap in the history of the reality genre), Montgomery began a series of big moves in 2013. That’s when he turned the Leftfield brand into a veritable American superindie, through the acquisition of Sirens Media (Real Housewives of New Jersey) and the establishment of two joint ventures: Loud TV with House Hunters International exec producer Nick Rigg, and Outpost Entertainment with Hoarders EP Jodi Flynn.

After building Leftfield Entertainment, Montgomery and team worked on extending the Pawn Stars franchise internationally (local adaptations air in the UK, Australia and South Africa) and moving Leftfield Pictures into new territory, with series such as Bravo’s Blood, Sweat and Heels joining other Leftfield programs such as American Restoration, Counting Cars and Oddities in the New York-based prodco’s catalog.

In May of 2014, the brand-building efforts culminated in one of the biggest acquisition deals of the year, when ITV announced the US$360 million purchase of an 80% stake in Leftfield Entertainment. “The idea of being a lone wolf while the rest of the market is consolidating made me a bit nervous,” Montgomery told delegates at the inaugural Realscreen London conference in October, during a keynote interview, and the move to sign with a UK-based parent company should go some way towards fulfilling Montgomery’s aim to score more commissions internationally.

But beyond the multi-million dollar deals, Montgomery also made waves in the unscripted world in 2014 by making Leftfield one of the founding companies of the newly launched trade association, the Non-Fiction Producers Association (NPA). At a time when the spotlight is shining rather unflatteringly on labor relations and production practices in reality programming, the NPA, according to its mission statement, aims to foster and promote a set of best practices for reality producers. And as with his biggest show to date, the success of the NPA will ultimately be dependent upon teamwork.

Why was the sale the right move to make for both the company, and for you? Many would assume, looking at the dollar figure accompanying the sale, it would be an easy decision to make. Was it?
Financially it was a no-brainer, but emotionally, it was more difficult to sell my life’s passion. Paul Buccieri [now with A+E Networks] and ITV were very convincing and have been great partners, allowing us to focus more on the creative. The result is the strongest development slate in our history, which is a key thing, as we need the volume to allow us to find and keep good people.

Let’s talk about the NPA. What can you tell us about the impetus for being a founding company for this association? What are some of the aims that you hope it can achieve?
The industry as we now know it is only about 15 years old, and there’s no playbook for business owners who don’t have business degrees. I’ve been fortunate to have mentors like Jon Murray and Eric Schotz, and I think the group represents producers who are focused on making this a sustainable industry that gives the current generation and the next a real opportunity for success.
The networks have been extremely supportive, and securing their pipeline with well-run businesses is as vital for them as for us.

As one of the more successful producers in unscripted, what do you see as the prime challenges facing the industry in the year ahead? And how do you plan to meet them?
Reality is at its first major crossroads. Scripted was mulling along and not taking risks a few years back, and all of us scruffy reality producers showed up at the party, where no one told us we weren’t supposed to get better ratings than the shows costing 10 times as much to produce. Even better for the nets, they were able to own the IP. Now, scripted has answered the call and is better than ever, but it’s less profitable and takes three times as long to hit the air.

In the unscripted industry we need to focus less on the last 2% of the show, with rounds of frame and music notes, and more time on the other 98%, being bold with ideas and storytelling. The tight schedules often don’t allow time to focus on both so let’s all be smart. I firmly believe the pendulum will swing back our way, with many of the big budget scripted bets not paying off, as scripted becomes oversaturated.